Stroud, slaves and Indian Peggy
In our last history lesson looking at the hidden history of Stroud’s involvement with the slave trade, Stuart put out the phrase ‘Fair exchange is no robbery’ whilst discussing the possibility of Stroud cloth being traded for slaves.
In my short stint of internet research I found no direct reference to this (though the port lists of Bristol may well tell otherwise) but given that cloth was such a desirable resource, that Stroud is so close to Bristol and that Stroud cloth was internationally renowned, it’s more improbable that it wasn’t at some point traded for humans. But I did find out that as the slave trade waned, Britain and other countries started to trade directly with the Americas and with the people that lived there.
Alongside this I also found the website of The Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery (RAMM) in Exeter hosts an exhibition of wool industries and manufactured tradecloths. Backing the exhibition is a piece of textiles research by Morwena Stephens at the University of Southampton showing that many textile artefacts from other cultures were made of Stroud tradecloth, or ‘Stroudwater Red’ as it was often known.
The following text comes from The Colonial Records of South Carolina – Journals of The Commissioners of the Indian Trade 1700 – 1730, as quoted on the RAMM online exhibition resource – direct evidence that cloth was indeed traded for furs along the routes carved out by the Hudson Bay Trading Company
‘in 1716 “Indian Peggy” appeared before the Commissioner of Trade with a “French man” purchased by her brother and given to her. The man had come dearly, costing her brother “a gun, a white Duffield match coat, two broadcloth match coats, a cutlass and some powder and paint”. Peggy was willing to exchange her hostage for the gun, and “the value of the rest of the goods might be paid her in strouds.”’
This posed so many questions for me. Who was Peggy, and how did she come to be standing before the Commissioner? Was she native or was she white – a woman of the First Nations or a trapping precursor to Annie Oakley? Who was the French Man, and why was he hostage? In what still would have been very much a man’s world, why was her brother happy to relinquish this costly hostage?
I am a sucker for a story of a resourceful woman, and this seemed like a story just waiting to be told – and so here is my prose poem re-imagining of it.
Fair Exchange Is No Robbery
Indian Peggy walked a fine line between the red and the white;
a selvedge woman trading between two worlds
It was a life with high reward and commensurate high risk
as Peggy found to her cost one day
when a French trader, passing through,
tried to dupe her with sweet words, and strong liquor, and the promise of fine furs.
‘What need have I of your furs, when I have finer of my own?’ she said
and when she refused to trade her red for his white
he swapped barter for force, and took it anyway.
After, he laughed, threw a used and ragged beaver pelt at her, said
‘Fair exchange is no robbery’.
Much later, her brother found the man; betrayed by his trapper kin who swapped knowledge for coin
for there’s no honour amongst thieves
He beat him, broke him; gave him to Peggy to do with as she would.
The French man walked on swollen feet, hands tied, hobbled by twin shackles of pain and shame
as Peggy led him to the commission
The Commissioner stood there in his fine red coat, asked that she state her business.
Peggy stood tall ,looked him in the eye and demanded compensation, set her price.
Peggy walks away, her head held high
fine rifle slung over her shoulder, a bolt of pure Stroudwater Red tied across her back.
Fair exchange is no robbery indeed.
Charlotte Rooney
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